We submit for your consideration the strange case of one Chiseled McEdifice. A lowly photocopy repairman or so he says. But what is this? His attempts to prevent paper supplies going missing has brought him to the SPOOKIEST part of any office building!

And there, amid the dust, and the spiders, and the rat-droppings and the incessant drip-drip-drip of leaking pipes, he discovered that all along, the paper was being stolen by…

A HUMANOID ALIEN INFLUENCED PHOTOCOPY MACHINE MAN TRYING TO COPY HIS OWN BUTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hmmm, you think that’s NOT scary? Well how about this:

HE ALSO JUST FOUND OUT THE PLANET HE IS ON HAS BEEN INVADED AND THE INVADERS ARE SEARCHING EVERY BUILDING ON THE PLANET!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, still not frightened? Still acting like you’ve seen and heard everything before? Well I guess we forgot to mention that:

THE INVADERS ARE SPACE VAMPIRES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, still not scared? The eldritch violation of geometric forms created by the self-referential madness of a photocopier’s own bum copies not sufficiently madness inducing for you? The approaching footfall of alien forces heading towards the dark basement where are heroes are trapped not sufficiently adrenaline inducing for you? The utter horror of the very existence of SPACE VAMPIRES is not sufficiently nightmarish for you, the cynical see-it-all post-modern hoity-toity consumer of modern media? Well let me also tell you one more thing:

THERE IS A SQUIRREL JUST OUTSIDE YOUR WINDOW AND IT IS STARING AT YOU WITH ITS SQUIRRELLY EYES WAITING WAITING WAITING FOR YOU TO LET YOUR GUARD DOWN AND THEN IT WILL STRIKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Sound of running feat, crashing and banging noises and several doors being closed]

[Um, Hi, everybody. Camestros here. Sorry. Brief technical interlude. Timothy seems to have frightened himself with his own narration and is now hiding in his panic room with a flame thrower. I’ll continue with his notes. I’ll try to be spooky.]

More stuff about global IQ from various far right sources which I shan’t bother linking to. This a sort of whine about how the OECD’s PISA study of 15 year olds in several educational areas gets positive coverage but noted IQ nut Richard Lynn’s claims about global IQ don’t.

The reasons are straight forward but ignored by Vox Day et al who like to make use of global IQ claims to push their racist theories:

These supposed global IQ studies are based on pulling together multiple data sets largely not designed for cross-national study.

IQ tests themselves in general are not designed for this kind of study.

IQ and IQ scores are based on core assumptions about how the trait is distributed across the population (e.g. an IQ score is directly related to the standard deviation of the target population).

The samples for the data sets were chosen for the purpose of whatever the original study was and not for cross national comparisons.

Compare that with PISA.

The tests are designed for the express purpose of cross national study. That involves extensive trialing of the test questions as well a heavily moderated translation process to try and ensure the people taking the tests are doing equivalent questions.

The sample size per country are chosen to be at LEAST big enough to allow for cross national comparisons and are often larger per country to allow for internal comparisons.

The scores are based on a completely different statistical model that makes fewer assumptions about the distribution.

Now having said all that there are still plenty of reasons to be skeptical about PISA rankings and comparisons. However, global IQ claims are necessarily WEAKER methodologically and statistically than PISA scores. Of the two, the PISA scores are far more sound and without some substantial evidence to the contrary, the PISA data trumps Lynn’s number fudging.

Fine to disbelieve both but if you have to pick PISA is far, far, far more sound.

I think I forgot to mention that Chapter 6 also involves a weird proxy argument with Mary Robinette Kowal. The pretext is to demonstrate some of the fallacies he mentions in action but he fails to describe them adequately. The general point is that there is ambiguity in what she said (some of which was from Twitter – not a great medium for ambiguity free communication) and therefore he was really right all along. Suffice to say the section works its way back to SFWA expelling Vox etc etc.

After the Aristotlean fallacies, Chapter 6 takes us to list of “SJW Tactics”. This bit is kind of fun because it is classic Vox projection. He divides them up into individual tactics and then organizational tactics. However, I’m going to do them in a different order – organizational first and then a game for everybody with “individual”.

Organizational Tactics

These are the terrible things SJWs are supposed to do to organizations. Vox lists seven and he manages to set up a deeply insightful analysis of how an organization can be destroyed by political extremists. The only problem is that as an analysis it fit bests how the right have wrecked the Republican party. Again, I’ve changed the order to show the sequence of events better.

“The Code of Conduct: Modifying the organization’s rules and rendering them more nebulous in order to allow the prosecution or defense of any member, according to their perceived support for social justice.”

Lobbying organizations on the right like the NRA or “Americans for Tax Reform” have systematically created an extension of the GOP’s actual rules and accountabilities for their politicians. For example the ATR has been pressurizing Republican candidates (at state and federal level) to sign the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge”:

ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and

TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.
(the exact wording varies between position)

These kinds of ideological tests backed up with threats against the candidates nomination act as a complex code of conduct for GOP representative. Note there is little here that pertains to the ethics of their behaviour but only their ideological purity

“The Pharisee Gambit: The SJWs inside the organization load an organization’s rules and operating procedures with conflicting requirements and procedural logjams. This makes it highly difficult or impossible to get anything done. They attribute the resulting inability to accomplish anything on those within the organization they want to discredit.”

OK, I don’t know enough about the Republican Party’s organizational rules to point out a in-party example but never mind that because this reads like a near perfect description on Congressional Republican behavior dating back to at least Newt Gingrich. The only upside to their habitual procedural log jamming, is that they now find themselves so out of practice that they are struggling to push their own agenda – despite controlling both houses and the Presidency.

“Unlocking the Door: Relaxing the organization’s standards enough to permit unqualified entryists to enter the organization.”

It’s not just Sarah Palin, it is a long history of temperamentally unsuitable candidates now occupying positions of power. At a higher level we’ve seen an unwillingness to adequately vet Trump’s appointees and the normalization of white supremacists and krypto-fascists within the Republican Party.

“The Conspiracy: If you put two SJWs in the same room, they will find each other and organize a secret mailing list designed to coordinate attacks on people and ultimately converge converge the institution by sundown.”

I guess arguably the conspiracies have been quite open and hence only a partial match here.

“Break the Norms: Constantly violate the social rules that dictate the avoidance of political and religious matters in order to stir up conflict inside the organization.”

Again the GOP and the Fox News approach of make EVERYTHING partisan and force everything into a narrative about somehow Christianity being persecuted.

Voila, I give you the Grand Old Republican Party currently shuffling around with not a single shred left of the principles that it might have had in 1950.

“Blame History Game: Infiltrate, capture, and converge an organization, then blame all the resulting failures on the organization’s non-SJW positions prior to the changes you have made.”

Enough said really. The only remaining question is whether the same approach will continue with the United States.

For a happier note, observe how the last five also largely describes the Sad and Rabid tactics for Worldcon and the Hugos: entryism, breaking the norms, blame the past and the final objective turn the result into a mockery. Castalia still tries to use “Hugo Finalist” in this manner. Have no doubt that they would have attempted the first two if they had had more numbers, better organization and had faced less determined opposition.

Individual Tactics

OK here is where everyone can play!

Vox lists thirty odd terrible crimes of so called “SJWs”. Now I think I can safely say I recognize each of these from encounters from Sad Puppies, Rabid Puppies, Gamergaters, or the wider world of Scrappy Doos. I started listing the examples but they became too numerous and overlapping. I’ve numbered and abbreviated each one and replaced “SJW” with […] so you can imagine the appropriate context. All you have to do is think of a Sad or Rabid Puppy example of them doing exactly that (or Gamergater example but that’s even easier as this is like a laundry list of Gamergate’s behaviors). Some overlap, like that time the Mad Genius crew decided Spacefaring Kitten was really Brianna Wu, others some up the whole movement (e.g. ‘The Predicted Demise’).

Extra points if the example is Vox himself 🙂 Answers either in your own head or if you want to share put them in the comments 🙂

The Tag Team: If you take down an […]s argument with dialectic and successfully explain why his position makes absolutely no sense under any circumstances, he’ll disappear, but another […] will promptly show up to attack your position from a different direction.

The Brave Sir Robin: When overmatched, the […] will run away and declare victory.

The Dog Pile: If triggered by a rhetorical response to his own attack, the […] will broadcast it as far and wide as he can in order to summon reinforcements. This tactic is also known as the Swarm, and is the desired result of the Point-and-Shriek.

The Bait and Ban: The […] attempts to draw you into a discussion, often by asking seemingly innocent questions or pretending to be seeking information about something that he’s just heard about. His questions will increasingly turn prosecutorial, then devolve into outright attacks. [To force a ban of some kind or as a pretext of a ban]

DARVO: This stands for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.

Crying Wolf: When an […] is feeling overmatched, or is responded to rhetorically in kind, he will often make false claims of abuse, harassment, and stalking.

The Move On: When the […] helpfully tries to get you to just admit you made a mistake so everyone can move on.

The Custom Dictionary: This is the same as Aristotle’s Ambiguity, or the Humpty Dumpty Dictionary, in which the […] selects, or utilizes, whatever definition he finds most useful to his cause at the moment, regardless of what you actually meant.

The Gatling Gun: The […] spams you with insults until they find one they believe triggers you or makes you look sufficiently bad to others. This doesn’t necessarily mean one that actually serves either purpose, which can be confusing.

The Woodstock 1969: The […] claims you were at a place, did something, or had a conversation that could have never taken place. The more outlandish the claim, the more effective this tactic is, because it tends to confuse the target and it can be difficult to convincingly disprove a negative, especially when the accusation is coming from a stranger on the Internet.

The Planted Seed: This is when the […] intentionally plants a false claim with the aim of getting enough of their allies in the media or high visibility sites to repeat it. [This one is mainly Vox complaining that people call him a white supremacist because of all the white supremacist shit he says.]

The Worst Person in the World: The […] claims you are “worse than Hitler” due to your violation of the Narrative.

The False Ally: One […] pretends to take your side while the other […] presents the […] case. The first […] then pretends to be convinced and demands to know how you could fail to be similarly convinced. He acts betrayed when you fail to go along with his sudden conversion.

Attack the Family: […]s will always go after your wife and children. [or spouse of any gender presumably]

The Promotion: […]s always attempt to elevate a leader of the opposition in order to freeze, isolate, and marginalize him, thereby weakening the opposition. .

The Fight Promoter: There is nothing […]s like better than “let’s you and him fight”.

The Challenging Assertion:This is when the […] makes a statement of opinion presented as fact, daring you to contradict it and thereby reveal yourself as a Narrative-denier and legitimate target for the […].

It’s Just This One Brick: […]s always defend the next tactical step towards their long-term objective as being totally unrelated to all their past and future efforts.

The False Fallacy: When confronted, they will often claim the opponent has made a logical fallacy, although when asked which specific fallacy was made, they are not only unable to identify it, but even point out where in the argument it happened. [Vox then gives an example in which he had an argument but the guy does actually point out one of Vox’s common fallacies – false equivalence]

The Straw Man’s Advocate: The […] assumes a position for his opponent, then pontificates on how this assumed position is contrary to something that the opponent has said, creating a hitherto nonexistent dichotomy between the opponent’s two positions. Any failure to rectify the real position with the imaginary one is proof that the opponent is wrong and a hypocrite.

The Straw Man’s Mask: This is when the […] incorrectly summarizes the opponent’s position in order to better attack it.

The Failed Flounce: When feeling pressed, […]s frequently declare that they are too busy to continue the discussion or have to leave for one reason or another. More often than not, this does not prevent them from continuing the argument for another hour or two.

The Forgetful Fade: Upon being confronted with an opponent who outmatches them, an […] will often vanish, only to return again later with precisely the same arguments, facts, and figures that were previously refuted.

Attack the Source: […]s frequently request a source for even the most obviously true statement in order to attack it rather than argue the point directly or admit they are wrong.

The Sock Puppet: This is when an […] creates multiple accounts in order to pretend to be different individuals and create the false impression that more people support his position than actually do.

The Amused Spectator: […]s love to claim that everyone is laughing at their opponent… They like to pose as being amused, world-weary sophisticates, but they can never maintain the pose for long once people start mocking them and it often collapses in an entertaining, rage-filled meltdown.

The Brushfire: If an […] feels he is losing the upper hand, he will not infrequently attempt to burn down the discussion with distractions, inanities, vulgarities and obscenities in order to avoid taking a kill shot, or at least to prevent third parties from noticing his defeat.

The Crowd Inflation: […]s always, always, always exaggerate their numbers and posture as if their position is the standard, accepted, mainstream one, no matter how obviously untrue that is.

The Predicted Demise: An […] will frequently affect sadness over the inevitable downfall of his opponent, who is fated for certain failure due to his crimethink and ineptitude. Example: “It’s a little sad, actually. You’re really overestimating how much people care.”

The Worst Possible Assumption: An […] will consistently assign the worst possible meaning to every statement and preemptively take offense at it without making any attempt to determine whether any offense was intended or not.

The Concerned Supporter: This shows up every election cycle, when obvious Democrats claim to have voted for every Republican candidate for President except the current one, because he has gone too far.

Be prepared to be trapped in a 1980’s disco that looks like it’s paying homage to the set design of the Wizard of Oz and the classic SF book cover paintings of Chris Foss. Also there are jokes.

There is a story and the story makes sense. In a prologue involving Thor trapped in a cage with a skeleton, he recaps events we have seen and not seen but which revolve around Thor’s prophetic visions from Avengers: Age of Ultron. This is followed by an encounter with (sort of) the big bad Surtur – the being prophesied to bring about the end of Asgard in the Marvel Universe’s version of Ragnarok.

This is just the first of several info-dumps. Loki has some explaining to do as does Odin. Odin in particular has to introduce the character of Hela (Cate Blanchett playing the Marvel Universe equivalent of the Norse Hel). Don’t, whatever you do, worry about whether any of these details match up with Norse mythology – they don’t except at the most vague level i.e. Odin’s past machinations will lead to the destruction of Asgard and Loki is involved, a giant wolf and Hel/Hela. Hela herself has to explain some stuff but luckily Karl Urban gets to be her unwilling sidekick so she has somebody to talk to.

Surprisingly, the story all makes sense which is odd because the film acts like the story doesn’t make sense and doesn’t care. It is, a romp.

If you’ve seen the trailers you know that Thor ends up as a kind of gladiator on the planet Sakaraa under the hedonistic rule of Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster. There we encounter The Hulk in all his green glory.

Like Guardians of the Galaxy this a hectic space-fantasy comedy. The emotional range is less complex than Guardians and the jokes are more overt. The laid back quips of director Taika Waititi don’t always work as well in the mouths of Asgardians as they do in Waititi’s own character (a giant alien rock man called Korg) and some of the humour does require familiarity with the previous Avengers movies but there were plenty of giggles.

At the end the movie got Thor from A to B – from Earthbound Avenger to part of the cosmic setting where I assume Avengers: Infinity War will take place. A lighter (and shallower) entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe but wild, colourful fun with excellent performances all round.

I am not doing a chapter-by-chapter review of the latest altrightploitation book by Vox Day but I am going to spend some time in Chapter 6 (two posts) and then maybe one more post to sum up (tldr – it is rancid, don’t bother).

Chapter 6: Standard SJW Tactics begins with a complaint about him having his account partially suspended by Twitter. This is intended to exemplify what he calls the SJW tactic of “bait and report” i.e. Vox gets in an argument with somebody, loses his cool and posts something that leads to him being suspended.

Which apparently leads us to Aristotle:

“It is one of more than a dozen such tactics that I have observed SJWs utilizing over the past few year, and what is fascinating is how many of these tactics were first observed more than 2,400 years ago by one of Man’s greatest thinkers, Aristotle.”

Having said that, we don’t get an illustration of social media bait and report re-imagined for ancient Athens (which might have been interesting). I’d imagine the advice would be simple from Aristotle – if somebody is trying to bait you then don’t let them wind you up. There is an excellent example from Jesus in the New Testament dodging a “bait and report” when he is quizzed about paying taxes. Mind you I don’t think Vox reads the New Testament much, particularly not a section where his God implies that you should pay your taxes.

Anyway, put my side trip to Jesus aside, Vox is back with our friend Aristotle. This time rather than Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Vox wants us to look at The Organon and in particular the section called On Sophistical Refutations. “Sophistical” here referring to sophists – the quasi-professional arguers of stuff and/or Plato’s contemporary philosophers not in tune with the Socratic wing of thinking.

Aristotle lists 13 fallacies and Vox goes through them all to some extent. I’m going to look at them from a different direction

Fallacies in the language

The first set of fallacies Aristotle describes as “Fallacies in the language”.

Equivocation (sometimes listed, as Vox does, as Ambiguity) – using two concepts with the same name interchangeably. For example when Vox uses “SJW” to mean both a leftwing radical and a nice lady who helps at church. This works as part of this first four set of fallacies and when you consider each of them you can see how they run through most of Vox’s arguments.

In addition it is a ripe source of definitional games – such games are common in all forms or argument. They can be legitimate in so far they help refine or generalise concepts but it is absolutely necessary to be clear that this is occurring.

Amphibology – an exploitation of an ambiguity in sentence/phrase/word structure. A very Vox related example is that in English we can say “X are Y” to mean “some X are Y” or we can combine nouns to both qualify a group or describe a quality of a group. For example “dishonest politicians” describes a subset of politicians but can also be a description of politicians. This particular case amphibology works in tandem with the next fallacy.

It is important to note that ambiguity is baked into our natural language. The fallacy is not the use of ambiguous language in general because it is nigh on impossible to avoid using it and even trying to avoid it makes you sound like a Vulcan that other Vulcans find too pedantic. A statement like “white supremacists protested” can be read as “the people who protested were white supremacists” or as “there where protestors who were white supremacists”. The reasoning fallacy arises from exploiting the ambiguity – if Black Lives Matter say “police are shooting innocent African Americans” in context they clearly mean “there are specific cases of specific police officers shooting specific African Americans who were innocent of the crime that they were suspected of.” Normal speech does not (and to be useful cannot) unpack all the assumed understanding. This makes the fallacy quite powerful though – somebody like Vox can exploit a statement like “police are shooting innocent African Americans” and treat it as a semantically and logically quite different claim that police in GENERAL are shooting African Americans and the that the people they might shoot are all innocent. This much broader claim can then be not only debunked (despite it not being what BLM actually claimed).

The same ambiguity of language that requires cooperation from the listener to understand what is general and what is specific can then be exploited with the Alt-Right’s own claims (as discussed throughout). Now with a level playing field such games become tiresome quickly but when there is an inequity around media access, and an inequity with access to power what you end up with is a kind of communication tax on the more marginalized party. The Alt-Right get to be as ambiguous as they like because they can avoid taking responsibility for their claims and have no moral qualms about being inconsistent. A group like BLM, however, end up having to carefully watch for any ambiguity in what they might say because it will be exploited.

You will note that this applies even at the level of Republican versus Democrat. Hillary Clinton is forced to speak more carefully so as to avoid ambiguity. Male Republicans can rely on the benefit of the doubt when it comes to ambiguity. The communication tax advantages the powerful because more natural, more comprehensible and more accessible speech tends (surprisingly) to be more prone to ambiguity.

Combination – using a part to generalise about the whole. For example when Vox says “the media did X” when he in fact he is referring to a few media sources. This is the over-arching fallacy in much of Vox’s thinking in tandem with the kind of amphibology listed above. Muslims, immigrants, black people, women, “SJWs”, liberals, “globalists” – Vox’s claims are replete with attempts to make people see particular cases are collective properties. For example he may find a case of a woman somewhere retracting a sexual harassment allegation or a sexual assault allegation to imply/suggest that women IN GENERAL make false allegations. That such retractions are rare is ignored. You can see a similar approach with his use of scare stories about immigrants particularly involving sexual violence (for which he abandons his normal scepticism around such allegations) to suggest that this is a more general feature of immigrants.

Division – attributing a property of a whole thing to part of the thing. The flip-side of combination and as a pair they make for some very poisonous fallacious reasoning. A common one we see on the right is ascribing a property of a religion to members of that religion (favourably or unfavourably). For example confusing a claim about Islam in general with Muslims (usually negatively) or Christianity with Christians (usually positively).

You can see how these build up into toxic syllogisms. A particular X is a Y, from which by amphibology and combination Vox re-express this as the idea that X’s in general are Y’s. By division he then reapplies that to some different particular X to conclude that this other X is a Y. This won’t be spelled out quite so starkly in his writing but that is the whole point of this kind of sophistry. The reason Aristotle was trying to name fallacies was not to identify every logically incorrect claim (of which there are infinite) but to spot the ones that effectively HIDE the bad reasoning.

In each case Vox can retreat on a specific element of his position because he expects his readers to make the fallacious leap. He rarely outlines the steps from, say a specific case of an immigrant in France committing a crime to the generalisation of immigrants being criminals, but instead asserts these as individual truths as if they had already been established. If challenged on any, he can exploit the inherent ambiguity to demand that his accuser proves SOME OTHER claim to be false.

Underlying both are deeper structural fallacies described below (Accident and Secundum quid).

Accent – an ambiguity created by the use of stress of a sentence. Aristotle’s version depends on aspects of how ancient Greek was spoken. In English the equivalent is how stress can change meaning: e.g. “I didn’t eat that cake.” (a simple denial) versus “I didn’t eat THAT cake.” (a denial that has been qualified to limit what is being denied.) Vox definitely doesn’t get this one saying:

“Accent is not much used by SJWs or anyone else who speaks English, because it is defined as “the ambiguity that emerges when a word can be mistaken for another by changing suprasegmental phonemes, which in Ancient Greek correspond to diacritics.” Also known as prosody, it is almost entirely irrelevant today, even in its expanded form that is based on the stress one lays on an individual word. You can safely ignore this one.”

Which is an equivalent mistake as looking at the original definitions of poetic meter from Greek and declaring that poetic meter does not apply to English.

Form of expression – a tricky one that Vox uses to mean any kind of category error. Ironically this one really does have issues with translation from Greek to English. Aristotle’s examples involve misuse of grammatical forms of words to create ambiguity around real categories – in his example using a grammatically masculine form for something feminine to essential mis-categorise a male thing as female. English has minimal grammatical genders and hence the closest example to Aristotle’s would be misgendering somebody in English. Obviously that isn’t an example that Vox is going to use. The fallacy might apply in English with tense, where grammatical agreement could be exploited with word games.http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.858.8369&rep=rep1&type=pdf
This paper takes the concept further and not a million miles from Vox’s use. Whether it is what Aristotle was driving at is another question but one way of seeing this as a deep and important fallacy is to regard it as saying that the grammatical expression of a sentence and its logical structure are distinct to the extent that two grammatically similar sentences can be quite logically different. For example “The current President of the USA has tiny hands.” is quite a different from “The current President of the UK has tiny hands.”

Fallacies not in the language

The second set of fallacies Aristotle describes as “Fallacies not in the language” i.e. more logically structurally.

Accident – ignoring obvious exceptions to general rules or generalisations. Readily exploited in nerd humour. Vox makes particular use of this when discussing emigration. Technically the term can be sensibly used to describe the kinds of population movements seen in world history from Germanic tribes in classical times to various central Asian peoples at multiple times in history. In those cases the movements were associated with war but those examples clearly have other features and qualities that are quite different from modern immigration. Consequently it does not follow that a feature of, say, the Mongol invasions is also a feature of modern asylum seekers.

Secundum quid – this forms a pair with accident, which together are both fallacies of generalisation. Also called ‘converse accident’ this involves over generalising from an exception.

Rather like the fallacies of Combination and Division we have a one-two punch throughout Vox’s work: a fallacy of over-generalisation (often exploiting linguistic ambiguities to hid the trick) followed by a fallacy of ignoring the exceptions and limitations of the general rule.

I think we can call them the bigoted sophist’s six: equivocation and amphibology are the specific means by which combination and accident generalise from specific cases to whole groups (often with FALSE evidence regarding the specific case) which are then re-applied using division and secundum quid to ascribe that fallacious claim about the group to a specific individual. Teasing the specific named fallacies apart is almost impossible.

And while I’ve used “exception”, more generally we are looking at fallacious generalisation to form general descriptions that are then held to hold at every level. For a more laughable example here is Vox drawing a very histrionic conclusion in a recent blog post:

“Do you remember hearing how Disney loved the song “Let It Go” so much that they created an entire movie to go around it? Did you ever ask yourself what it was they loved so much about it?Don’t let them in, don’t let them seeBe the good girl you always have to beConceal, don’t feel, don’t let them knowWell, now they know!

It’s time to see what I can doTo test the limits and break throughNo right, no wrong, no rules for meI’m free!

Disney is run by literal satanists preaching Alastair Crowley’s “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” to children. They are one of the primary engine’s of the West’s degeneracy and decline. It is not an accident that everything they touch, in every industry, turns into morally radioactive slime.”http://voxday.blogspot.com.au/2017/10/the-devil-that-is-disney.html

I think there may be something wrong with me because sometimes I see arguments so perfectly bad that I feel like applauding.

Look at how the very, very, very particular becomes the sweepingly general. You can watch the fallacies above in action but they often crash and merge into each other. It is a ballet of bad reasoning. To wit:

We have PART of the lyrics of ONE song by ONE character at a PARTICULAR moment of that character’s development which, as fans of Frozen will explain to you (maybe this will go over Vox’s head as it is has more character depth than the usual Castalia House output) is when that character is intended to be ethically dubious (literally and literary a nicer version of Hans Christian Anderson’s Snow Queen). That lyric, in one movie from a studio which puts out many movies and which has many scriptwriters, lyricists, directors etc working on many projects is THEN taken by Vox as indicating the GENERAL belief of the organisation.

A fallacious argument would be: Alastair Crowley looks a bit like Vox Day doing a podcast therefore Vox Day will be evicted by the Italian government

That belief is then equated with (and I mean “equated” i.e. treated as being equivalent in all aspects except form) one statement by infamous occultist Alastair Crowley . Now fair enough, as the statement was asserted as a general law by Crowley, it is probably legit for Vox to then ignore the broader complexities of Crowley and his beliefs.

We then get a sort of hidden mangled Affirming the Consequent (see below) that presumably is supposed to work like this:

Seriously, if I had to manufacture an example of fallacious reasoning I couldn’t produce anything quite as appallingly demonstrative as proving that Elsa’s showstopper proves that Disney are literal satanists and one of the primary causes of the destruction of Western Civilization.

The next step (which doesn’t appear in the post) would be citing a particular person associated with Disney and on the basis of the argument above EVEN IF THEY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH FROZEN suggest that they are satanist. I’ll let you know when I see it happen :).

Irrelevant conclusion – essentially asserting a conclusion that is not supported by the (possibly valid) argument. Vox seems to think that the issue here is just irrelevance but is missing the point. Aristotle didn’t highlight this as an example of a fallacy just on the basis of irrelevance. Obviously asserting a conclusion not supported by your argument is a fallacy but Aristotle is pointing out how an apparently related conclusion that follows an apparently valid argument can be persuasive because the audience feels like they have been rationally led to a conclusion.

Take this argument Vox uses a bit earlier in the chapter when he mangles “forms of expression”:

“That being said, some form-of-expression fallacies are clearly intentional. It is almost certainly an intentional category error when objections to mass Islamic immigration into the European Union are described by SJWs as being racist, for the obvious reason that Islam is a religion, not a race or an ethnicity, and even the most maleducated SJW is likely to know that.”

Vox presents an argument: Islam is a religion and not a race or ethnicity. He then concludes that therefore opposition to “Islamic immigration” cannot be racist. You can spot some of the other fallacies in play there e.g. “Islamic immigration” is not how immigration policies work, immigrants don’t emigrate from Islam, and also *Islam* isn’t the thing doing the emigrating but rather Muslims – and of course, Muslims immigrants will have ethnicity. However, more generally Vox’s conclusion doesn’t follow from his argument. The premise of the argument is basically correct: Islam is not a race or ethnicity but the question is about the motives for opposition to kinds of immigration and hence is about the beliefs of those doing the opposing NOT what Islam is or might be – it pertains to what they (the opponents) think and racism and racists have never shown any particular requirement to stick to facts or reason about the targets of racism.

Begging the question – assuming what you are setting out to prove. Enough said really.

False cause – any of a variety of fallacies where it is asserted that one thing is a cause of another without sufficient reason. Examples are legion but the modern right indulges in a new fallacy that we might call “denial of cause” i.e. fallaciously claiming that an actual cause is a false cause because they really don’t want to deal with the actual cause.

Affirming the consequent – this a classic logical or syllogistic style fallacy.

Usually described in terms of implications and if p then q style sentences you can get a similar effect from an invalid syllogism. All A are B, C is a B, therefore C is an A affirms the consequent fallaciously.

For example:
If a dog is healthy then it has a cold wet nose
When I get out of the pool my nose is cold and wet
Therefore when I get out of the pool I am a healthy dog.

Vox’s description is a bit odd but not wrong.

“Affirming the consequent is a formal fallacy that is considerably less often encountered, although a crude and unsophisticated version of it that I call That Just Proves is utilized as a form of rhetoric by some SJWs. Another, more useful description is the confusion of necessity and sufficiency, which occurs when one infers the opposite from the original statement. To put it more simply, if X implies Y, that does not mean that Not-X necessarily is Not-Y. It might be, but it also might not be, so to say that it is would be wrong. Since it’s very unlikely that you will encounter this form of argument from an SJW or be able to coherently explain to him what is false about it, let’s just move on.”

Vox is correct: if X then Y does imply if Not-Y then Not-X but not vice-versa. However, the fallacy applies without getting into negation. I’m really not sure why he thinks this is uncommon.

Complex question – posing a question that forces some additional assumption. There are a whole bunch of these in Foreword e.g. We are told that the book will answer many questions about SJWs:

“What causes their inherent blindness to objective, observable evidence that their conduct dooms and destroys everything it touches?”

I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to find the many other examples.

Standard SJW Tactics

The second half of the chapter is devoted to “Standard SJW Tactics” and it is worth its own post because you’ll recognise each of them from Sad and Rabid Puppy behaviours during the Puppy Kerfuffle.